One of the best things about writing for a busy blog, is the feedback I receive from readers. Usually, the feedback is a general question about marketing, business development or a suggestion; and these can be answered by my readers and myself in the comments section of the relevant post.

As some of you already know, I use Twitter; the micro-blogging tool, to keep in touch with some friends, clients and contacts. I have three thousand followers and really enjoy interacting with them; they are a BRILLIANT bunch of people! However, I know that many of them find it hard to get new followers, so I decided to do something to help!

My idea

I wanted to develop a list of my followers, who were all interested in networking – so people could build their Twitter follow lists. I sent my followers a Twitter message (called a Tweet), asking them to send me their name and their username, if they wanted to go on this list.

Only around 70 of the 120 or so replies I got were actually usable. The remainder were sent without a name, or were emailed to me via the blog, without a Twitter user name! Obviously, because so few of the messages were usable, it became way too time consuming for me to continue and the list has been closed.

Two important lessons I want to share with you

Firstly, Twitter is a wonderful tool, but it is limited. It only allows you to post 140 character long messages. This means it’s great for getting short, direct messages out, but lousy for explaining things. I’m sorry for not being clear enough with my request – But that’s NOT the reason I’m writing this!

There was a second, far more valuable lesson here!

Around a dozen of the messages I received were borderline abusive or very abrupt. So, as a marketing man, I wanted to know how that kind of online networking attitude was working for these people. Here’s what I found….

I decided to take a look at their websites or blogs, using a few of the well-known online research tools – just to get a very general idea of how many people they were attracting to their sites. Not one was registering even average traffic numbers. Then I took a look at the blogs of those who had blogs, and saw very few comments or signs of reader activity. Finally, I noticed that none of them had more than a handful of followers on Twitter either.

Whether building a network of clients online or offline, it seems the same rules apply:

People are attracted to attractive people– and they are repelled by repellent people.. When I talk about being an attractive person here, I don’t mean physically attractive – I mean attractive in relation to one’s personality and actions. Even ugly, bald guys like me can be attractive as people ya know!

The way we interact with people online is REALLY important. If we try to help people, speak well of people and focus on delivering quality to people – we will attract the help and co-operation of others. However, if we speak ill of people, are abrupt with people or focus too much on ourselves – we will attract very little positive response.

What have YOUR experiences been with online networking?

Do you have any tips you would like to share with your fellow readers? If so, please leave a comment below.

As you may already know, I am passionate about helping as many people as possible to massively boost their sales and profits. This means I’m always looking for great marketing ideas, which I can share with people – and today, I have enlisted the help of 37 amazing professionals, who are going to each give a single, short marketing tip!

What 1 piece of marketing advice would you give to a start-up business?

My question was; “What 1 piece of marketing advice would you give to a start-up business?” Now, the reason the following answers to this question are so focused, is that they were given by people who only had 140 characters in order to get their answer across!

Twitter

Yes, each of the answers you are about to read, were submitted by people I do not know, but who follow me via my favourite social media website Twitter. The end result are 37 diverse and often-powerful answers, from 37 incredibly clever people, who wanted to pass on their ideas to help you and your business!

I am posting the answers exactly as they were sent, with the abbreviations etc, so you can see for yourself just how much value someone can get into such short messages!

It’s also worth considering that these answers come from a brilliantly rich group of people, from many different profiles of businesses, and this is reflected in their answers – which really helps!

I think the end result is amazing and would like to personally thank everyone who was kind enough to offer this advice here for my readers. Obviously, I do not endorse and am not responsible for, the content of the external sites listed in this post!

After you read the answers below, see if you can offer some great advice yourself, using 140 characters, in the comments section!

So, what 1 piece of marketing advice would YOU give to a start-up business?

Here’s 37 answers in 140 characters or less!

Marketing is like a snowball. You have to keep rolling to see results. You can’t start and stop and start and stop. Cynthia Powell www.ChicksAndCubs.com

Innovation in marketing is as much imp as innovation in product itself. think different in marketing it. Sushrut Bidwai www.sushrutbidwai.com

Talk to your customer. constantly. don’t assume you have what they need. confirm it with them. Julie Lenzer Kirk www.JulieLenzerKirk.com

There are “bug” days and “windshield” days. Be the Windshield and ready to travel lonely dirt roads to reach your destination. Tim Hayden www.gpexperience.com

Truly love what you do or you won’t stick with it long enough to succeed! Karalyn J. Eckerle http://cardinalpointva.typepad.com

Conclusion

The marketing tips above were sent to me within just thirty minutes of asking the original question. This means that there are not only a lot of extremely helpful people ‘out there’ – it also shows what a great marketing and business development tool Twitter can be for your business.

OK – Now it’s YOUR turn!

In 140 characters or less, please share YOUR answer to this question;“What 1 piece of marketing advice would you give to a start-up business?”

As of today, Jim’s Marketing Blog has a whole new look – I hope you like it! For me, content is everything – but people need to be able to find that content easily and read it without any fuss. So, how did I come up with this new blog design?

The importance of user opinions

After the initial draft of the blog was done, I asked my readers and contacts for THEIR opinions of the new design. In total, almost 500 people emailed me, messaged me, Tweeted me or called my office – and their feedback has been invaluable in shaping the look and ‘feel’ of the blog!

I believe a blog or website should be designed for the people who read it; NOT the person who writes it!

This means if there are certain recurring suggestions being made by lots of people, there’s a good chance that’s what the wider readership will also want! In each case, I acted on these suggestions.

For example, the initial draft of the blog didn’t have a picture of me on the homepage, because as you can see, my looks are not by best asset! 🙂 However, it became very apparent from your feedback that people wanted to be able to see the ‘person’ behind the blog. So, my picture was added.

Ditto, the sign-up box for my free ebook and also the sidebar headings were all changed, based on popular suggestions. The net result is hopefully, a blog that’s easy to use and simple to navigate around – with lots of useful information for you and your business.

To all those who have helped me over the past few days, “Thank You!”There are way too many to mention individually, but your feedback has been of huge value to me. I would also like to give my thanks to Mark White of Better Business Blogging for doing all the technical stuff behind-the-scenes.

Over the past few days, I have read a few different people giving the same piece of extremely damaging advice!

Stop your marketing!

Believe it or not, there are people out there right now, suggesting that because there is an economic downturn, credit crunch or recession (take your pick), businesses should avoid investing in marketing! This could not be further from the truth. In fact, during tough economic times, it’s far MORE important to market your services effectively than during a stronger economy.

Why?

Because when times are good, even poorly marketed companies will make some sales – just by being there at the right time or getting their message in front of enough people.

However, when money is tight, people and businesses have to REALLY THINK before they buy anything. They also become far more attracted to products and services that offer great value. So, they spend money on the things that sound the most valuable and compelling – and that’s the goods and services that are best marketed!

I shall be writing some posts over the coming days, to show you how you and your business can thrive during a weak economy. Make sure you don’t miss a thing, by subscribing to my RSS feed using the orange button on the top left hand side of this page!

Just a very quick post, to let you know that I am in the process of having a brand new theme applied to this blog. As a result, I have not posted anything for a few days (while the theme is being tweaked). However, I have some GREAT stuff waiting for you when the new theme has been added!